Possibility Quotes - Page 38

• There may have been a time when war served as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force, but the destructive power of modern weapons eliminates even the possibility that war may serve as a negative good.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  War, Evil, Growth

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2013). “"In a Single Garment of Destiny": A Global Vision of Justice”, p.109, Beacon Press

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• Christ said: Blessed are the peace-makers, not blessed are the peace-sayers. If the world fell into the hands of totalitarian factions, there is still the possibility that they might fight amongst themselves. Surrender to them would not encourage the kingdom of peace and love - and those that desire it, or with passionate intensity permit it, know not what they do.

  Michael Novak

  Peace, War, Blessed

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• Isn't a policy of conventional weapons, with the terrible bombs raining down, with the missiles, with the aircraft, with the submarines, with the torpedoes, with the tanks, with chemical weapons - isn't that based on the possibility of threat?

  Margaret Thatcher

  War, Rain, Tanks

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• Music education can help spark a child's imagination or ignite a lifetime of passion. When you provide a child with new worlds to explore and challenges to tackle, the possibilities are endless. Music education should not be a privilege for a lucky few, it should be a part of every child's world of possiblity.

  Hillary Clinton

  Children, Passion, Imagination

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• Dolby stereo increases the possibility of emptiness in film sound at the same time that it enlarges the space that can be filled. It's this capacity for emptiness and not just fullness that offers possibilities yet to be explored. Kurosawa has magnificently exploited this dimension in Dreams: sometimes the sonic universe is reduced to a single point-the sound of the rain, an echo that disappears, a simple voice.

  Michel Chion

  Dream, Rain, Simple

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• It might take us a lifetime to find out what it is we need to say. Most of us fall into where our feelings are headed while we're quite young. But the beauty of all this uncertainty would be that in the process of exhausting all the possibilities, we might actually stumble unconsciously into the recognition of something that's useful to us, that speaks to a deep need within ourselves. At the same time, I like to think that in order for any of us to really do anything new, we can't know exactly what it is we are doing.

  Emmet Gowin

  Photography, Fall, Thinking

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• While we are young the idea of death or failure is intolerable to us; even the possibility of ridicule we cannot bear.

  Isak Dinesen

  Failure, Ideas, Bears

  Isak Dinesen (2011). “Seven Gothic Tales”, p.10, Vintage

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• The pleasure of satisfying a savage instinct, undomesticated by the ego, is uncomparably much more intense than the one of satisfying a tamed instinct. The reason is becoming the enemy that prevents us from a lot of possibilities of pleasure.

  Sigmund Freud

  Ego, Enemy, Savages

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• I'll do anything for $50. People are always trying to get me to do dumb things. The possibilities are endless.

  Ryan Cabrera

  Always Trying, People, Dumb

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• Democracy is not simply a political system; it is a moral movement and it springs from adventurous faith in human possibilities.

  Harry Emerson Fosdick

  Spring, Political, Democracy

  Harry Emerson Fosdick (1931). “Adventurous Religion”

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• It's like there are all these languages available, especially in terms of image. Why confine yourself to only English? There's all these languages and possibilities and concepts to speak or communicate with.

  William T. Wiley

  Language, Speak, Term

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• In the face of such overwhelming statistical possibilities hypochondria has always seems to me to be the only rational position to take on life.

  John Diamond

  Health, Faces, Rational

  C by John Diamond p. 17. Vermilion, London (1998)

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• It is necessary, then, to give the child the possibility of developing according to the laws of his nature, so that he can become strong, and, having become strong, can do even more than we dared hope for him.

  Maria Montessori

  Strong, Children, Law

  Maria Montessori (1970). “The child in the family”, Contemporary Books

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• You are not your circumstances. You are your possibilities. If you know that, you can do anything.

  Oprah Winfrey

  Circumstances, Knows, Can Do

  O Magazine, January 2007.

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• Within your own generation-the same songs, the same wars, the same attitudes toward those wars, the same rules and radio shows in the air-you can gauge the possibilities and impossibilities. With a person of another generation, you are treading water, playing with fire.

  John Updike

  Song, Attitude, War

  John Updike (2010). “Rabbit at Rest”, p.462, Random House

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• H. L. Mencken told me once that he answered all his mail, pleasant and unpleasant, with just one line, 'You may be right.' That's the way I feel now. It is in the realm of possibility, just barely, that I could be the one who's wrong.

  Clare Boothe Luce

  Lines, May, Mail

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• Coming to terms with the rhythms of women's lives means coming to terms with life itself, accepting the imperatives of the body rather than the imperatives of an artificial, man-made, perhaps transcendentally beautiful civilization. Emphasis on the male work-rhythm is an emphasis on infinite possibilities; emphasis on the female rhythms is an emphasis on a defined pattern, on limitation.

  Margaret Mead

  Beautiful, Mean, Men

  Margaret Mead (1975). “Male and female: a study of the sexes in a changing world”, William Morrow & Co

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• Benefits received are a delight to us as long as we think we can requite them; when that possibility is far exceeded, they are repaid with hatred instead of gratitude.

  Tacitus

  Gratitude, Thinking, Long

  Tacitus (2007). “The Annals & The Histories”, p.132, Modern Library

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• It bothers me to know there is the possibility that I as a Christian would be not only an underdog, but that I would be trodden upon if I claimed that I was a Christian.

  Lee Greenwood

  Christian, Underdog, Would Be

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• Europe has what we [Americans] do not have yet, a sense of the mysterious and inexorable limits of life, a sense, in a word, of tragedy. And we have what they sorely need: a sense of life's possibilities.

  James A. Baldwin

  Europe, Tragedy, Needs

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• Exporting Church employees to Latin America masks a universal and unconscious fear of a new Church. North and South American authorities, differently motivated but equally fearful, become accomplices in maintaining a clerical and irrelevant Church. Sacralizing employees and property, this Church becomes progressively more blind to the possibilities of Sacralizing person and community.

  Ivan Illich

  Latin, America, Community

  Ivan Illich (1970). “The church, change, and development”

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• Human judgment of human actions is true and void , that is to say, first true and then void.... The judgment of the word is true, the judgment in itself is void.... Only he who is a party can really judge, but as a party he cannot judge. Hence it follows that there is no possibility of judgment in the world, only a glimmer of it.

  Franz Kafka

  Party, Judging, World

  Franz Kafka (1991). “The Blue Octavo Notebooks”

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• The future looks extremely bright indeed, with lots of possibilities ahead -- big possibilities. Like the song says, We've just begun.

  Bruce Lee

  Song, Looks, Bigs

  Bruce Lee (2015). “Bruce Lee: Letters of the Dragon: An Anthology of Bruce Lee's Correspondence with Family, Friends, and Fans 1958-1973”, p.152, Tuttle Publishing

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• Modern discussions of the possibility of tragedy are not exercises in literary analysis; they are exercises in cultural diagnostics, more or less disguised.

  Susan Sontag

  Exercise, Tragedy, Analysis

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• The writer of stories or of novels settles on men and imitates them; he exhausts the possibilities of his characters.

  Salvatore Quasimodo

  Character, Men, Stories

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